Wher I live (New Jersey, USA) there is a lot of demand for housing, which pushes up rents, so buying a house (or condo/townhome) is often cheaper than renting, if can find a decent deal on a house and are planning on staying for a while.
I think the answer is different for each person. It used to be that a home was a good investment, but with the bottom dropping out of the housing market in most areas, I'm not sure that is still the case. Our house is worth about 30,000 less than it was four years ago.
Also, a house can tie you down. For example, right now, I don't think we'd be able to sell and you are tied into a mortgage.
On the other hand, paying rent goes to nothing solid. You pay it every month just like a house payment, but in the end you don't own anything. You also have costs with a house that you don't have with renting, such as maintenance, paying all utilities, lawn care, etc., so keep that in mind.
If I were very young, I'd probably do the following:
Live with parents for a while and save up a huge down payment.
Buy a house that I could afford (no more than one week's paycheck for payment, if possible)
Buy the cheapest house in the best neighborhood, so it goes up in value and you can resell
Make sure it has at least 3 bedrooms/2baths, even if you don't need that much space, because it will be easier to resell
Hope that gives you some things to think over. The worst thing in the world is to be so house poor that you can't enjoy your life and take vacations, so even if the realty companies tell you that you can afford a $200,000 house, don't believe them. Start with what you can afford for a payment each month and go from there. Good luck, whatever you decide.
Robert let me begin by saying my answer is going to be an obvious one for me, maybe not so much for others.
Things between myself and the mother of my children had not worked out, so the best scenario was for me to find an apartment. After I moved out I was lost, confused and really had no direction without my kids'! One night my buddy at the time wanted to introduce me to a girl, that girl is now my wife.
To make a long story even longer (haha) I moved out to her town of Stillwater, MN (where i currently reside) She had a quaint two bedroom and I could hardly breathe it was so small.
Weekends my kids would come on visits and since the apartment was so small, we would make beds on the floor for them. Understand my wife has a daughter, so to put 4 boys in the room with her was not an option.
Ok Ok getting to the end, my wife found a 4 bedroom house close by and we snatched it up and we still live here today!
Apologies for the long post, I figured if someone was maybe going through a similar situation this could possibly help with their decision.
The rent vs.buy analysis utilizes the tax benefits of home ownership as the primary element. There are many online calculators that will provide a general understanding of the concept. In many markets, you can own for less than it costs to rent. Buy a home to solve a housing need, not strictly for investment purposes.
by ramkkasturi 15 years ago
What process do you use to decide whether to read an article or not?Search engines are ok but beyond that do you just see the title or go beyond? After reading what makes you want to write a comment?
by Laurel Rogers 11 years ago
How do you decide whether a poster is a sock puppet or a troll?I am interested in folks who identify such things. Is it something obvious, or do you use deductive reasoning by reading their posts?
by lizzieBoo 13 years ago
At the moment, we have a blanket law concerning smoking in public places. Bars and pubs are smoke free, which is nice (although now you can smell the wee and sweat), but the streets are punctuated with clusters of smokers, so you are obliged to inhale smoke if you happen to be having a...
by The Tea Lady 14 years ago
do you have a definitive dictionary to decide whether to allow words or not e.g. Oxford English...Dictionary
by Tim Mitchell 14 months ago
American dream of owning a home is dead, majority of renters sayNote: All of the referenced have plenty of graphics for a skim.by The Guardian (Mar 12, 2024)https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 … GTUS_email"The American dream of owning your own home is dead, according to the majority...
by Muldania 13 years ago
The UK government has suggested introducing a discount of £50,000 for people living in a home rented from social housing organisations, should they decide that they want to buy their home. This would mean the average price of a flat falling from £90,000 to £40,000. This should be of...
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |